StayNTouch Blog

Hotel Technology: Keeping Your Hotel’s Heart Beating

When it comes to hotel technology, more often than not, it is a maze of outdated technologies, complex, fragmented, and inefficient. In a recent article featured on Hospitalitynet.org Margaret Ady, Head of Marketing at SnapShot accurately stated, “It’s a mess.” We are all more than aware that hotels have a number of different systems that must integrate in order to keep a hotel running. “And the biggest problem is that they rely on one another, but they don’t play well. They don’t integrate, at least not with ease. We have each of these systems with its own data, and one system’s data isn’t talking to another system’s data without complicated intervention. It’s a mess. But it doesn’t have to be.”

She went on to use the analogy of the working kitchen triangle – an idea formalized in the University of Illinois back in the 1940s. Still in use today, it is a set of rules that define the location and distance between the sink, the oven, and the refrigerator for optimal efficiency and use. Ady is not saying that if we line up all our computers in a triangle all our woes will be solved! Really what she is getting at is; “Instead of this mess, it [hotel tech] should be structured and organized” …as the benefits, and value of a fully integrated tech stack are many.

Afully integrated hotel system is more efficient, it is also more secure and cheaper to run; creating custom applications is easier and less costly; hotels can easily view and compare all data sets and glean truly actionable insights about their guests and their business – insights that can help improve service levels, provide personalised experiences and drive / create revenue opportunities.

As customers demand more convenience, more choice, and greater customization, Ady’s underlying message is clear; we need to organize our technology in order to maximize efficiency, revenue opportunities and ultimately remain competitive. “It isn’t as simple as a triangle, but it is as accessible”.